Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[129] who has been translated so much, although Don Quixote came very near it; but that neither of these had been rendered into so great a variety of dialects, because neither reached ignorant readers so well, or created such a demand for itself. For this reason especial pains have been taken by the Museum to collect all versions.

It must be remembered that the tale had the immense advantage, as had Cooper's novels before it, of introducing to the world a race of human beings whom it had practically ignored. The book had also, as the writings of Cooper had not, the advantage of a distinctly evangelical flavor. How much weight has been carried in other cases by this last quality may be seen in the immense circulation of such tales as Ingraham's Prince of the house of David in the last generation, and Wallace's Ben Hur in the present, both marked by this attribute. Indeed, Mrs. Browning herself subsequently writes of so mediocre a book as Queechy, which partakes of this quality, that “Mrs. Beecher Stowe scarcely exceeds it, after all the trumpets.”

After all reservations have been made, after we have admitted that the method is too